I happened upon something on NewsOK.com, the online version of the newspaper The Oklahoman. I say “something” because it was certainly not an article, I don’t think it was a column, and it was so scattered that I daren’t call it an opinion piece. I suppose that this may be the sort of writing that contributed to the newspaper being named The Worst Newspaper in America by the Columbia Journalism Review in 1999. The headline (what lured me in) was “Rules of grammar are not set in stone”, but the text did not seem to hold any significant relationship to its headline. As far as I could tell, it was basically a statement that perhaps ain’t is a word, but then again, of course it’s not, but maybe it is, and by the way, I think you can split infinitives.
My brain is still a bit sore from the whole ordeal, but there’s one bit of insanity that stood out heads and shoulders above the rest:
“Grammarians still wrangle over whether the wild and wooly English language should be saddled with civilized Latin grammar.”
No, we don’t. You might as well say “biologists still wonder whether a penguin wouldn’t be better off as a lion”, or “chefs still debate whether peanut butter could be improved by making it gazpacho”. Penguins have an ecological niche just like lions do, and peanut butter has as much its own taste as gazpacho does. Similarly, English has as much a grammar as Latin did.
There is about as much debate about this point as there is about whether Barack Obama really qualifies as a “natural-born citizen” according to the Constitution. Yes, there are people who fervently claim that Obama’s birth certificate is a fake, or he was born in Hawaii before it was a state, or whatever. But these people are wrong. So too with Latin-loving prescriptivists; they exist, but they’re wrong. Very wrong. They don’t understand languages at all.
Point of fact, English isn’t so wild anyway. For instance, there is a very specific word order to English, which is not true of free-word-order languages like Russian, Warlpiri, or (guess what!) Latin. The only reason that Latin seems orderly is because it’s a dead language, so there’s hardly anyone around to use it — and therefore, hardly any data that could disprove the grammatical rules that people think Latin obeys. It’s static in a way that no living language will ever be. Which leads to one final point: if Latin’s grammar was so wonderful, why did the language die out? The answer, of course, is that it didn’t — instead, it morphed into the various extant Romance languages, which, you’ll notice, people rarely suggest English should adopt the grammar of.
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January 15, 2009 at 11:21 am
mike
Well, I certainly hope we don’t adopt the _spelling_ of those wacky Romance languages. Especially French, gah.
Oh, wait …
PS Sir, I’m positive that there’s a rule somewhere that says you can’t end a blog post with a preposition.
January 15, 2009 at 11:45 am
The Ridger
Thanks. That was indeed scattered. I left a comment, asking why the lady who believes “rules of grammar are set in stone” uses such a debased form of English. Why, I asked, does she say “I have always believed” and not “ic gelieftan haefdon aefre”? Why, even, “it does not change” instead of “it changes not”?
As the kids on the intertubes say, teh stupid – it burnz.
January 19, 2009 at 8:31 am
Daniel
The piece in question is a syndicated column, and said columns are described as “brief, simple, humor-laced lessons on grammar, usage, syntax and word meanings.” Make of this what you will.
Incidentally, while I agree that grammarians don’t “still wrangle over whether the wild and wooly English language should be saddled with civilized Latin grammar”, I would argue that it’s for the exact opposite reason from the one suggested. In my experience, “grammarian” is almost exclusively used to refer to prescriptivists (descriptivists are “linguists”); therefore, grammarians don’t wrangle over that issue because the vast majority of them agree that English SHOULD be saddled with civilized Latin grammar. I’m sure there are some exceptions to this (indeed, our esteemed blogger is clearly one), but I feel confident in saying the term “grammarian” is more often used to refer to prescriptivists than descriptivists.
January 19, 2009 at 3:15 pm
goofy
“Just within the past few years, the Oxford English Dictionary, stalwart guardian of our linguistic heritage, ruled that it’s OK to (gasp) split an infinitive”
I wonder where this notion comes from. Or is it true that the OED “ruled” on this recently.
January 20, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Daniel
Goofy, I’m not sure if there’s a ruling in OED itself, but I did find the following web page where they discuss the matter:
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/splitinfinitives
January 23, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Gabe
mike/Ridger: You are funny.
Daniel: I agree with you that most of the people who call themselves “grammarians” are prescriptivists that probably do think English would be better as Latin. I agonized over whether it was fair to claim that grammarians don’t argue about this. But in the end, I decided that it’s time for us linguists to take back the mantle of “grammarians”. After all, we’re the ones who actually study it, who actually have to think about what language is like, instead of just regurgitating what others wrongly thought. Let the prescriptivists call themselves prescriptivists, or philologists, or whatever, but WE are the grammarians.
Also, thanks for pointing out the askOxford link. It effectively weakened my argument. You jerk. :)
February 5, 2009 at 6:53 am
Daniel
Always glad to be of service, Gabe. ;->
October 8, 2021 at 10:22 am
Shirley777
Who, exactly, are grammarians? Are they self-defined? Are they Oxford Dictionary lexicographers? University English profs? Editors of the Chicago Manual of Style? Proofreaders (like me)? Or is a grammarian someone who has a grammar website? Just wondering.